Oooh… new, quiet, dreamy embroidery work by New Zealand based artist Jane Denton! I’ve written about Jane’s work before – gorgeous, beautifully embroidered geometric shapes – but for those pieces she used bright pops of color like hot pink and deep yellow. This new series is so soft and quiet. Shhh, I think I can hear them whispering my name… “Danielle, you need to have all of us in your house. Immediately.”

J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow.” said the Prince, “will you stay with me one night longer?”

Oscar Wilde, The happy prince

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“A black shadow dropped down into the circle. It was Bagheera the Black Panther, inky black all over, but with the panther markings showing up in certain lights like the pattern of watered silk.”

Rudyard Kipling, The jungle book

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“If you love a flower that lives on a star, it is sweet to look at the sky at night. All the stars are a-bloom with flowers…”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The little prince

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“Do you know, I always thought unicorns were fabulous monsters, too? I never saw one alive before!”

“Well, now that we have seen each other”, said the unicorn, “if you’ll believe in me, i’ll believe in you.”

Lewis Carroll, Through the looking-glass

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Oh my. Jenny Lumelsky & Tomer Ronen founded Touchka Tales because of their love for storytelling and because they wanted to “play in between the two worlds of Illustration and Fashion”… well, mission accomplished! From The Little Prince to The Jungle Book, they’ve picked five nostalgic stories from childhood to illustrate for their first series. Sigh. Now I want to read all of those stories again… while wearing the matching scarf, clearly.

I may never look at another book or magazine the same way again! Oh, I would love a stack of these hand sewn, fabric art books/magazines by American artist Megan Whitmarsh on my coffee table. And I know this post is not about me, but have to say it… how insanely cool would it be if she made “Creative Block” out of fabric, foam, embroidery thread, and markers!? Speaking of which, I wonder if these are the markers she uses:

Philadelphia based artist/designer Mirim Seo sent her Special Sashimi project to me last week. For the first two or three pages, I thought “Oh, cute. A book about Sushi” … and then a few pages later, I gasped.

“Special Sashimi is about the slaughter of dolphins in Japan. The story topicted in this book is true. Each year Japan fishermen kill around 2,300 dolphins as a form of pest control, which has been accepted as tradition. And the killed dolphins end up in freezers and served sashimi in Japan. Illustrated with hand-sewing and watercolor on fabric. With this book, I hope to spread the true and help stop the senseless killing of the Taiji dolphins.”

Oh my word. I wish so much that I lived in Bethnal Green, east London, so that I could pop into this newly transformed cornershop! Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING {even the cash register!} is made of felt! British artist Lucy Sparrow has taken a rundown storefront, and turned it into a completely stocked “felt” market {just under 4000 items!}… felt chips, felt beer, felt magazines, felt canned ravioli, felt candy, felt ketchup, felt popsicles… ok, I’m sure you get it, but it’s all just so awesome, I feel like I should make a little grocery list! Speaking of awesome, this quote by Lucy is just about perfect:

“I’m very obsessive and I want that to come across in the work and get people thinking ‘Who would be crazy enough to do this?'”

Yep. We’re all thinkin’ it! This crazy little shop is open for business until August 31… GO!!!!!! ps. if you aren’t in London, you can also visit her online shop!

{Open every day from 10am – 7pm : 19 Wellington Row, London : via The MIRROR}

Ok. Part of me is so in love with these textile moths {the colors, the patterns, the skilled technique required to make them}, but the other part of me… shudder! Yes, I have some major issues with flying things {there’s a story about a butterfly sanctuary in there, but that’s for another day.} Luckily these beauties, by North Carolina based artist Yumi Okita, can’t fly… RIGHT? Oh, and just so you have a sense of scale:

LINT. These gorgeous portraits are made with lint. On canvas. For real. I thought I should just mention that out of the gate, before I started talking about these fantastic, blurred/mirrored portraits by Toronto based artist Tonya Corkey. They are from her incredibly beautiful/linty series titled See you in the future. Now, you’re probably wondering, “why lint?”, “what’s it all about?”… well, wonder no more:

“Being within the discourse of painting, craft and photography, my work investigates an unavoidable aspect of human nature, the desire to seek memories. The series, “See You In the Future.” investigates the role that the photograph’s referent plays in memory and its loss over time.

My work hybridizes the discarded material of lint with the second hand image – the iconic school photograph – to conceptualize my interests. Materiality conceptually layers the work. As a byproduct of society, lint consists of fibers, hair, dead skin and other debris, and thus directly referencing people and their daily activity. Lint and cast off photographs are both discarded materials – materials that reflect the idea of a decaying memory. Our desire for memory in absence is triggered by sensations of smell and touch, a trait of my work. The void spaces of raw canvas in works such as, “Unknown #1”are intended to reflect memory, described through the standing out of key features: the eyes, mouth and hair. The viewer’s mind fills in these void spaces in the same way a photograph would.” ~ Tonya Corkey

So cool! Oh, and ps. there are also non-mirrored portraits in this series that I love just as much:

YAY! I cannot believe I found this! Two years ago I was rushing through the Portland airport and was stopped in my tracks by this amazing installation. I quickly looked at the artist’s name printed on the glass and tried to commit it to memory as I ran for my flight… and then I forgot. Well, thank goodness for Pinterest, because yesterday morning I was drinking coffee and scrolling through the art section, and voila… textile jellyfish floating peacefully in a giant glass tank! I now know that this is the work of Japanese born, Iowa based artist Sayuri Sasaki Hemann. These gorgeous fabric jellyfish, and felted anemones {is that what those are called?} were part of a huge installation at the Portland airport in 2012, titled “Underwater Flight”. It really did look like a huge, magical aquarium… so peaceful, so delicate, amazing.

I’m about to totally date myself, but… one of my earliest childhood memories involves a visit to a “real artist’s studio”. This “real artist” was a good friend of my mom’s {my mom is an amazing painter, btw}, and she had a loom… because it was 1978! I remember working for hours and hours on my very own tapestry. My parents had that terrible weaving on their wall for years. Well, after seeing this work by Melbourne, now New York based, artist Maryanne Moodie I so badly want a do-over! She has taken this stereotypically 1970’s art form and so beautifully modernized it with her use of bold geometrics, and unbelievable color choices.

Maryanne has a website, but I also follow her on Instagram, which is where I found all of these fantastic images. I love that there are finished pieces, works in progress, and colorful supplies fresh from the yarn shop! Gorgeous, and oh, so inspiring. Ok, Mom… get the loom. I think I feel another tapestry coming on.

Je t’aime… mushroom terrariums, and perfect petals. So, so gorgeous. These little bits of nature, in textile form, are the work of Paris based textile designer/artist Lyndie Dourthe. Delicate, whimsical, and beautifully made. I know this sounds greedy, but I really truly want all of these beauties… yes, even those poisonous mushrooms. It’s ok. They’re under glass.